Kim Howells: I have certainly met trade unionists from Iraq, and would be only too glad them again. I am not aware of the case that my hon. Friend has presented to the House.

Mr. Speaker: Hindsight isa wonderful thing. This happened last Thursday. It was dealt with, and we move on. Perhaps it is best that the term "misleading" never be applied to the comments of any right hon. or hon. Member.

Tony Baldry: I think that the hon. Gentleman is mistaken. Certainly the housing associations in my part of the country—including Banbury Homes, which is part of Shaftesbury Housing, and Charter Community Housing—have good tenant involvement. Only the other day, they organised an open advice day for local tenants at the Spiceball centre in Banbury, working with other agencies, including the district council, to explain such matters as housing benefit. I thought that that was a very good initiative, and that I believe tenants of both Banbury Homes and Charter Community Housing are very satisfied with their landlords. After all, the tenants had to vote, by a majority, for the large-scale voluntary transfers.
	What concerns me is where the new social housing is to come from. The Housing Corporation is concerned about its members, committees, sub-committees and employees. My concern is this. When money is allocated through the regional housing boards, designated growth areas such as Milton Keynes and the Thames Gateway do extremely well, but shire districts are literally white on the map: they receive no money from the Housing Corporation. The Minister suggested that Banbury Homes and Charter Community Housing should apply to the regional housing boards, but the trouble is that those associations are below the size of those that the Housing Corporation appears to be funding. The Minister looks quizzical, but the corporation seems to have an unwritten policy of funding only certain areas.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) rightly referred to new development. Banbury and Bicester, in my constituency, are probably two of the fastest-growing towns in the country, and a great deal of new development is going ahead. The difficulty lies in the definition of affordable housing. Developers have sold a proportion of their housing at below market value for the first time, so for the first time it is affordable housing because someone buys it at below market value; but it is not affordable housing thereafter. We are not seeing new social housing being introduced as part of the planning process for new development.
	Again, the Minister looks quizzical. Let me challenge her, as Minister for Housing and Planning. We have a huge housing development, which she has just decided not to call in, at Bankside/Bodicote. I shall be interested to see how much new social housing comes to that development as a consequence of the planning system. I suspect that very little will do so. As a result of all that, working families on low incomes with children are finding it extremely difficult to gain access to secure housing.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I think that I shall disappoint the hon. Gentleman when I say no. I know that several of his colleagues asked why the Bill was not broader and why other items were not included. The measure deals with a specific problem, which was believed to be urgent and pressing, and it was therefore appropriate to tackle it as expeditiously as possible.
	The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) asked on behalf the Liberal Democrats whether other non-departmental public bodies were caught in the same dilemma as the Housing Corporation. We have studied the situation, and we are not aware of any other bodies for which such retrospective legislation is required. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning said earlier, other bodies of a similar nature to the Housing Corporation already have, or subsequently had, a power of delegation. We perceive the Housing Corporation's situation to be a specific anomaly.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about the impact of rejecting the Bill, which is a consideration that has tasked those who have had a chance to consider it in depth. To reject the Bill would be to cast doubt on the validity of several classes of statutory decision already taken by the Housing Corporation, most notably the consent to dispose of land under section 9 of the Housing Act 1996. Lenders have expressed considerable concern about the lack of certainty over such decisions, and they could decide to take remedial action if the situation persisted, including re-pricing loans, preventing the drawing down of existing funds, or not taking forward new business. Clearly, that would have serious consequences, such as damaging the financial viability of registered social landlords or preventing new developments from going ahead. The Bill is designed to ensure a continued flow of private finance to the RSL sector, and to ensure that RSLs are financially viable and that tenants are protected.
	The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) asked about general consents given under section 9 of the Housing Act 1996. Our view is that section 9 deals only with general consents for the disposal of land. There are also uncertainties about other matters, however, including the registration of RSLs and the consent to rule changes of RSLs. We need to resolve all those issues, not just those relating to section 9, which is why we did not think that it was an appropriate vehicle for dealing with this matter. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath specifically mentioned that point.
	The hon. Member for Wellingborough also asked about the original legislation, suggesting that the board make these decisions itself, as well as about the pay of the Housing Corporation's directors. The directors' pay is in line with that of other bodies of this nature, including English Partnerships. When the Housing Corporation was established, its role and functions were very different. Today, it makes such a large number of statutory decisions that it has become administratively inefficient, and it would be a bad use of the board's time for it to take every statutory decision required of it in modern times. When the Housing Corporation was set up, powers of delegation were more readily implied. There was no intention in the Housing Act 1964 that the board should spend all its time on what could be low-level—albeit statutory—decisions, and the Housing Corporation now makes thousands of decisions every year.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about ensuring that we had adequate time to debate this issue. We do have more time now, should he wish to catch the Speaker's eye, although I do not think that that is necessarily the case. We have clearly had adequate time to deal with this matter today, and I am confident that the usual channels will ensure, as they always do, that we have a decent number of sittings in which to scrutinise the Bill in Committee.
	The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) raised serious questions about his own patch. They related to transfers, of which there have been three from Cherwell district council since 1995. I have to say to him that there has been a 36 per cent. increase in regional housing funding between 2004 and the allocations up to 2008. He raised serious concerns about the success of the negotiations between the local authority and the developers, and about the lack of adequate provision in respect of new developments. If I may be so bold, I should like to suggest that, were the officers of his local authority to seek assistance from the officials at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, we would be very happy to have a dialogue with them to ensure that they are well prepared to get the best possible deal on future developments. If the hon. Gentleman wished to write to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning about this, I am sure that she would be only too happy to deal with the points that he has raised in more depth, although they were perhaps slightly outside the scope of the Bill.
	The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) asked about delegation to members, sub-committees and employees, and whether that was too broad a power. We are advised that that is a typical power of delegation for a body of this nature, and for other organisations and public bodies such as the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection and the Audit Commission itself. Such powers are necessary for the Housing Corporation to operate efficiently and effectively, and are similar to those for similar organisations.